On Thursday, the House Subcommittee on
Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education held a hearing to explore ways
to ensure teacher quality through improved evaluation systems, an idea we
whole-heartedly agree with. The
committee heard from four witnesses: from the Superintendent of the Knox County Schools (TN), the Human
Resources Officer for the Houston Independent School District, a French
Teacher at Herron High School in Indianapolis and a representative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The testimony was overwhelmingly in
favor of a multi-faceted approach to teacher evaluation systems, including student
outcome measures, which could go a long way to ensuring teacher excellence.
It’s great to see this issue getting even more of the
attention it deserves.
